José María Lasalle, Spain’s Secretary of State for Information Society and Digital Agenda, visits 5TONIC

02 February 2017

Mr. José María Lasalle, Secretary of State for the Information Society and the Digital Agenda, recently visited the open research and innovation laboratory 5TONIC, hosted at the headquarters of IMDEA Networks Institute, a top research center on networks that places Madrid as a leading European region in the development of future network technologies.

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During this first visit of the head of state policy for the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, the scientific program of the innovation and research laboratory 5TONIC was presented.  Launched in 2015 by Telefónica R&D together with IMDEA Networks, this initiative is deploying a large-scale experimental platform to evaluate the performance of 5G networks, which can place Madrid and its industry at the forefront of key technology. The lab already counts with 8 academic and industrial members and hopes to have others joining in the coming months.

José María Lasalle was accompanied by senior representatives of the 5TONIC member companies, including the CEO of Telefónica, D. David del Val, directors at Ericsson, Commscope and Intel, representatives of the University Carlos III of Madrid, and of the executive committee of IMDEA Networks.

Particular attention during this visit was paid to the presentation of several "demos" that showcased technical advances representative of the work carried out by the eight research groups in which the team of IMDEA Networks scientists is currently structured. With these didactic demonstrations by way of live experiments, researchers from different nationalities and with diverse backgrounds explained to the visitors the objectives of their work and up-to-date results, highlighting the real-world applications of these developments: from rescue operations in disaster scenarios, to improved video streaming, the optimized use of a scarce resource such as the radio spectrum, reducing energy consumption, the benefits of cloud and distributed computing, or the analysis of social networks with applications in marketing or sociology.